“About fucking time.”
She recognized the guy. He had been sitting with them at the table last night. The one with the teardrops tattooed on his face. “I was in the bathroom,” she said. She stepped back and he came inside. When the door shut, she led him into the living room. She didn’t want him anywhere near her, so she sat in the chair opposite the couch, trying desperately to mask the nervous apprehension slithering through her guts.
He stood for a moment, smiling down at her. Then he said, “I’m supposed to take you over to look in on your patient… and tell you Ben won’t be coming back.”
“What do you mean, he won’t be coming back?”
“I’m afraid Ben’s moved on to that big, bad motorcycle gang in the sky.”
“What… what happened to him?”
“He committed the Cardinal sin. He balked at a direct order, didn’t do what he was told. Unfortunately for him, he paid the price, which leads me to my final bit of business. We powwowed last night, Dub and I, talked about what to do with you. Dub wanted to waste your ass—hell, you did fuckup two of our men—but I talked him out of it, mainly by reminding him of his promise if you kept that guy alive. Won’t do for our leader to start going back on his word. Doesn’t look good to the troops. Besides, we might need you again if we get in a scrape. The upshot is this: Jet’s pissed and Dub wants to appease him. He’s gone up the road for a while, but when he gets back, you’re gonna strip down and let him do whatever he wants with you—”
Karen pictured Jet on his knees, blood spattering the ground beneath him. She almost smiled, but she didn’t. She didn’t dare.
“—short of killing you, that is.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked up at him. “You expect me to spend the night with that fucking deviant?”
Teddy shrugged his shoulders. Still smiling, he said, “That, or join up with Ben.”
“Some choice, huh?”
“At least you’ve got a choice. Ben didn’t have much of one.” Teddy rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, craned it to the right and his joints popped. “Look,” he said. “Just do what you’re told, you’ll be all right. We’ve already put the word out to leave you alone. Do what you’re told and you’ll be safe… C’mon, let’s get the fuck out of here. I’m beat and I gotta get you across town, go home and get some shuteye.”
Karen stood up. “Do I need to like… take anything with me?”
“Nah, just yourself. You’ll stay here for a while, ‘til somebody claims you. Hell, you might claim somebody yourself.”
Yeah, right, she thought, but she didn’t say anything. She followed Teddy out into the hallway, and the two of them headed toward the reception area. She was hanging by a thread and she knew it. Their leader wanted her dead—wasted. Teddy had talked him out of it, but how long before he changed his mind? How long would she last? Long enough for them to run into somebody else to heal their sorry asses, long enough for them to find out they didn’t really need her at all. She did have one thing going for her, though: they hadn’t found Jet yet. Another day had passed and she was still breathing. They would find him, though. It was just a matter of time. They’d find him in the alley with his throat slit. And they’d be pissed. What if he told somebody he was going to hang around and have his way with her? What if word got back to Teddy and his illustrious leader, and they put two and two together? Could they? They could if they ran into the gang who’d chased her away from the body and straight back to the hotel. They’d figure it out damn quick then. She was dangling by a thread over a nest of vipers, and the only thing she could do was hang on and hope for the best.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was tough to figure how that prick had gotten the drop on Big Everett. Skinny as he was, he couldn’t have kicked his own ass, much less taken out one of Dub’s best men. But there he was, hauling ass away while blood pumped from Big E’s pulped neck hole. The same prick who had left those four shotgun-riddled corpses back at the pit. Must have a thing about blowing off heads—two at the pit and now Big E. It was the same guy, all right, no doubt about it. The midget I.D.’d him while he was dangling from that doorway—between those high-pitched squeals of his, that is. Not that it helped much; Dub still hadn’t gotten a good look at the guy. All he saw was his tailpipes roaring away while a veritable fusillade of artillery hit everything but him: the ground, the mailbox, Big Everett and the house across the street. By the time they got to the main drag, he was gone. Where? Who the hell knows? They fanned out in all directions, through the city and up and down the Interstate, and still didn’t find him. But they would. Dub knew it. He felt it. Their paths would cross again, and when they did, pain would ensue. His pain, not Dub’s.
The euphoric rush from having rid himself of old man Carlicci had been short-lived, as all his victories and accomplishments throughout his life had been. As a child discovering drugs and alcohol, he had found himself wanting more: better drugs, finer liquor, fast cars and faster women. As he grew into the thug he eventually became, the thrill of the score was a fleeting reprieve from the boredom of his day to day existence. One crime would lead to another, one violent confrontation after another, until one day he found himself with blood on his hands and a hunting knife in his fist, a smile on his face as a man’s life seeped away in a torrent of red. But even that wasn’t enough to sustain him, and as the bodies piled up and his reputation grew, he found that nothing was ever enough. The drugs, the women, taking over the gang, emerging like a rising Phoenix from prison to behead Charlie K and resume his rightful role as leader of The Devil’s Own. None of it had been enough. Not even splattering old man Carlicci and his men from one end of his mansion to the other, an impossible task no one in their right mind would even have considered undertaking. Dub not only considered it; he pulled it off. And what did it get him? A couple of hours of crowing and thumping his chest, a brief respite before his insatiable appetite for bloodlust and violence sent him to the warehouses and back alleys in search of someone to degrade: a man to pummel, to torture, to beat with a whip until the flesh was flayed from his body; a woman to torment, to torture and rape, to roast alive over a roaring fire until she was just right. Ready to eat. Yes, ready to eat. It was Dub who had suggested they sample a little human flesh, a natural progression for a society sick to death of canned food and candy bars, devoid of the red meat it so dearly craved. It was Dub who lit the fire and laid that first screaming woman upon it. Dub who sliced off the first hunk of breast, and now it was a different craving that sent him and his boys out into the dark wasteland.
He was pissed about that woman this morning. Pissed at Bert for letting her go, pissed at her for dying before they could get her back. He left there, high on coke and low on patience, ready to stomp a mud hole into anything and anyone he found moving along those city streets. And damned if the first person he ran into wasn’t that spike-toothed midget. He was in the middle of the road when they roared around the corner. Before he could make it to the sidewalk they were on him. ‘Somebody’s dying this morning,’ Dub told him. He had barely gotten ‘Looks like you’re it’ out of his mouth before the guy started in about this hot lookin’ babe he had stashed in a safe house—good looking woman, and the guy who cut loose on those guys back at the pit.
The guy who cut loose on those guys back at the pit.
That bought him some time, and had they actually gotten their hands on the prick, it might have garnered him a pass. But they didn’t get the guy, and the ‘hot lookin’ babe’ inside the house was dead as a doornail, a sad fact that left the little man nailed to a door. Nailed to the door and left to rot while Dub returned to the Ambassador, twice as frustrated as he had been when he ran into the freak.
The tools of his trade lay on the table before him, a pistol and a pile of coke, a couple of joints and a bottle of beer and a half full bottle of whiskey. He was going to have to crash soon; he’d been up for almost three days. No amount of coke could keep him awake forever. But he didn’t
want to sleep. He was surrounded by halfwits and morons and he couldn’t trust them to run the show without him. He didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to huff down some more coke, slam another round of crystal meth and see what the day would bring him. He needed to get his men organized, start rounding up the Q’s and get them indoctrinated. There were things to talk about, groundwork to be covered, laws to lay down. He dipped his head and snorted a nose-full of coke, dropped the cut off piece of straw on the table and took a nice, long swig of beer. Somebody called out his name and he turned. It was Eddie, or Everett, not Everett—Everett had been blown to hell and back this morning. It was Eddie or Freddie, or some such shit. He came storming across the room, waving a two-way radio through the air. When he got to the table, he said, “Carlicci’s men are coming down the pike in a cherry red Corvette and three Hummers.”
“Where are they?”
“Just hit the city limits.”
“They see our men posted along the highway?”
“Yeah, they seen ‘em.”
“So they know we know they’re coming.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Let’s go see what’s on their mind.” Dub licked a finger and pressed it into the coke; it came away caked with the stuff. He spread it across his gums, stood up and grabbed his gun, slid it behind his back and led Eddie or Freddie or whatever the hell his name was out of the lounge.
Dub knew what was on Tony Carlicci’s mind, the same thing that was always on his mind: money and drugs, booze and broads. He was the boss now. He’d fed his men some bullshit story to grease the way, and now here they were, coming down from their fortified mansion in the hills to strike a deal. All these years, Dub had been under the old man’s thumb, fighting for the scraps that fell from his table, and then kicking most of them back up to his Lieutenants, and now here he was, set to split the entire city right down the middle with his son. It felt great, glorious knowing he’d made a bold move and now it was going to pay off.
When they reached the sidewalk, he said, “Bring them over here.”
The radio squawked. Somebody answered and Dub’s message was relayed. He stood for a moment, looking up at they sky, and then up and down the street. Finally he said, “When they get here, bring them inside.” He went back into the Ambassador, to the lounge. There were ten or so people in the place: Bert and Ernie, sitting at the bar alongside a couple of their biker brethren. Two guys and three scantily clad women gathered around a table near the stage. Spud was passed out in a dark corner of the lounge, an empty syringe before him, his face resting on the arms he’d crossed on the table. Dub recognized one of his truckers staring bleary-eyed across the floor, probably passed out sometime during the night and had just woke up.
“Huddle up!” Dub called out, and everyone turned his way. “Company’s coming.”
Four men were led into the room, one holding a bowling ball bag, another, a two-way radio, much like the one Dub’s man carried with him. The guy with the bag was stout. Dub put him at a little over five-feet tall, five-six maybe. A body builder, maybe, somebody who got off pumping the iron. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. His jet-black hair was cropped close to his scalp. He wore a black suit, a white shirt and no tie, five-hundred dollar shoes. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a barber shop, or off the pages of Mob Boss Quarterly, if there was such a thing.
“Where’s Tony?” Dub said, and the guy said, “Close by.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“A present.”
“Oh yeah? Open it up.”
Dub lit a cigarette and the guy placed the bag on the table. His men stood behind him, directly in front of Bert and Ernie, who had followed them across the room with strict orders to kill anyone who made a threatening move of any kind. A couple of tables to the right, two men sat facing Dub. Two more at a table to his left, each well armed and ready to rock. The women and the trucker were at the bar, Spud snoring in back of the room. The bag was zippered open, a hand went in and Tony Carlicci’s head came out.
“The fuck?” Dub said, smiling to let them know that, ‘Hey, this ain’t my first time at the rodeo. I’ve seen severed heads before, and a whole lot worse’. “The old man know you’re carrying his son’s head around like that?”
“That’s cute. Cute, ain’t it, boys?”
The three behind him barked laughter like a trio of trained monkeys.
Dub smiled and shrugged his shoulders, took a drag off his cigarette and blew some smoke in the air.
“You had a deal with this cocksucker.”
“A deal?”
“Split the town, fifty-fifty.”
Dub said nothing.
“Now you gotta deal with me.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re—”
“Of course you don’t. You didn’t come up to the house with a bag full of C4 and spread bits and pieces of the old man all over his walls. You didn’t make a deal with Tony here to get the old man out of the picture. You didn’t do any of that shit.”
Dub picked up a beer and took a drink, glanced at Tony and returned the bottle to the table. He looked like he’d been punted through a goal post. An ear was missing. There were cuts on his face and an eye was swollen shut, his mouth frozen in a rictus of startled alarm. Obviously he had told them everything they wanted to know in an effort to save himself. Dub didn’t care. He wasn’t admitting shit to this guy. He flicked his ashes to the floor and looked him straight in the eye.
“I brought the C4 up because the old man told me to. Brought our explosives expert along to show him how to use it. Said he didn’t need no one-handed, blown all to hell biker showing him a damn thing. We left and the stupid fucker blew himself up.” Dub raised a hand to his chest, smiling, parodying the sign of the cross with two flicks of a forefinger. “Rest in peace,” he said. Rest in pieces, he thought, and his smile grew wide.
“What about the Caddy?”
“What about it?”
“You blew it the fuck up!”
“We walked out and the place went up, drove off and those fuckers hauled ass after us. What’d you want me to do, let ‘em run my ass down? Not hardly, my friend.”
“So, you didn’t explode that shit… ”
“Fuck no, I didn’t.” … Spud did… “I just did what the old man asked me to. Brought him the girls and the clay, sat around talking about splitting up the town and we left. I mean, I don’t know you, who you are, where you come from. Any of that shit. But we’ve been with the family for years. We’ve always had a good working relationship with the Carliccis.”
“You killed him, you didn’t kill him. You were in on it, you weren’t in on it. I don’t care about any of that shit. We’ve got a shit-load of men, the knowledge and know-how to get those safes open. We’ve got a shit-load of men and so do you. We could wipe each other out trying to take over, but what good would that do either of us?”
Dub said nothing, just shrugged his shoulders.
“Why don’t we see if we can keep that good working relationship going?”
“Fifty-fifty,” Dub said, a stated fact, not a question.
“Whatever. There’s plenty enough for the both of us.”
They had been doing a dance, step by step, each probing the other for weakness, but finding none. He wanted it all and so did Dub, but to claim it they’d have to war, and whoever won, both sides would go through hell. There would be losses… major losses. The guy was right. With banks and jewelry stores spread all over town, there was plenty enough for the both of them.
“What’s your name, brother?”
“Carlo.”
Dub laid his cigarette in the ashtray, stuck out his hand. “Put ‘er there, Carlo,” he said, and the two men shook hands.
Dub said, “When do you want to get started?”
“No time like the present. I’ve got a crew outside. You get the electricity going in one of those banks and we’ll get the safe open, one way or another. Should be able to do one a day, a
t least one a day.”
Dub stood up, nodded at Bert, and said, “Take that truck driver and go round up some electricians, get ‘em and get one of those generators fueled and hooked up to the First National.” Smiling, he turned to Carlo. “Always wanted to rob that cocksucker.”
Carlo nodded, and Dub said, “One more thing. My friend there was supposed to hook us up with a couple of truckloads of that prime rib his old man was cooking up last night. We’ve been eating canned shit so long it’s starting to taste like Alpo. What’dya think?”
Carlo looked at his men, then back at Dub. “I can do that. Where do you want ‘em?”
“One here and one at the jailhouse oughta do it.”
Carlo turned to the guy with the two-way radio. “Make it happen,” he said, and Dub’s request was relayed: one at the Ambassador and one at the jailhouse.
Bert and the trucker left the lounge. Moments later, Carlo and his crew followed suit, leaving Dub and Ernie standing by Tony Carlicci’s misshapen head.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Scott spent a great deal of time looking through the album. Every now and then he would stop and stroke a finger across a photo, close his eyes and remember what he and Sandi had been doing back when the future was bright and love was in bloom. It was a special time in his life, and he cherished each and every moment that bubbled up to the surface of his memory: Sandi, standing on the shoreline, bathed in the golden hue of a glorious Bermuda sunset, her blonde hair blowing sideways in the soft, tropical breezes. Another photo of Sandi stretched out in her bikini on the shimmering pink sands, baking beneath the early morning sun. Scott remembered taking the picture, how he had wanted to take her right then and there. He had demanded she wear a thong that morning, but she’d laughed the idea away. Now he was glad she hadn’t worn it, because the picture would never have been allowed into the album, and that would have left him without this vivid jolt to his memory.
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